Naruto: Project Enigma
by Surarrin
Summary: Dream, as long as you know it's not impossible to make it a reality.


**Hey everyone, long time no submission, eh? To be honest my inspiration for writing has fallen quite a bit, with no small amount of thanks going to our good friend Kishi.. But! I am slowly getting back into writing, as evidence, here, I present to you all a small 'sacrifice' Which may, or may not evolve into a proper story.**

**In other news, I have now taken up residence at Http:// www. demonsdesire .net It is a forum that I, along with my friends have created. I'd say more about it, and the features i've added to it, and am still adding.. but you aren't interested in that, and if you are check it out, join, and get involved with the forum! It's been around for only two months and it's blossoming quite well.**

**Coincidentally, it is the only place where I show what I've written so far for Inter, aAP, and DitC.**

**Hope to see you all there,**

**Jon**

* * *

For once in his life, Uzumaki Naruto was truly happy. Everything was finally going his way. Sasuke was back in the village, The Akatsuki had been defeated, and most importantly, he was Hokage. Upon the top of his blonde hair adorned head the white and red hat of the Hokage sat, clashing with his hair.It had been ten years since he had begun his career in the arts of the ninja, and in that time he had seen, done, and heard many things, things beyond the normal comprehension of most mortals, be they civilian or ninja. The rookie Nine were all in their positions, both Jiraiya and Tsunade had conceded their differences, and everything was good, He himself had found his perfect girl, although, much to his chagrin it came with the knowledge that if Sasuke hadn't defected it may never have come to pass.

It was perfect, due to a number of freak occurrences and accidents, which Naruto doubted he, or anyone would ever be able to replicate. With every day he got stronger, every day Konoha got stronger. The only even slight discrepancy in his life was the demonic essence imprisoned within his navel, but even the Kyuubi was not a large problem anymore.

The Seal was slowly eating away at the Kyuubi, and within then past ten years it had withered the Kyuubi's seemingly unlimited supply of chakra down, it had started with a consumption rate unrivalled by anything that anyone had ever seen, but had exponentially slowed down once the chakra had come within the limits of human comprehension.

Kyuubi was all buy a husk of his former self, or so Naruto and the rest of the world believed. Unfortunately, deep within the sealed confines of Naruto's navel thing's were not as they appeared.

"Everything is perfect? Perhaps you forgot how you came to this point, Gaki. Perhaps you need... a strong reminder of how it all came to be." The Kyuubi said waspishly as it began to draw in all its remaining chakra.

In the corporal world, Naruto was becoming drowsy, although it was to be expected, it was far past midnight, and he had been awake for days, only kept awake by an Akimichi specialty. As he nodded off, Naruto could faintly hear a diabolical laugh.

"Naruto!" a slightly high-pitched exclaimed angrily.

Naruto's eyes snapped open, and he was just able to tilt his head to the side to avoid meeting a fist up close and personal.

Naruto blinked once.

He blinked twice, to be sure.

He blinked a third and final time for good measure.

"Sakura-chan, what happened to your hair?" he asked perplexedly.

"My hair?" Sakura echoed perplexedly before reaching up to the top of her head and dragging her fingertips lightly down.

"Nothing is wrong with my hair; you're just trying to avoid the beating I'm going to give you for taking Sasuke-kun's first kiss!" Sakura said angrily, behind her a group of girls agreed and began to congregate around Naruto.

"I could have sworn it was at least half that len- What do you mean I took-, where am I?" Naruto demanded to know as he glanced around.

His eyebrows rose up to meet his hairline as he recognised where he was, he would have been hard pressed to not know where he was; Iruka's classroom.

"I could have sworn I was in my office a second ago," Naruto murmured thoughtfully as he once again tilted his head to the side, to avoid Sakura's fist.

Naruto leaned backwards slightly as he avoided yet another girl's fist, Ino's if he guessed, from the pale skin colour.

The last thing he remembered was dozing off in his office. It did not take much deduction from that point to come to a conclusion to what had happened, a basic stupidly simple explanation to what was going on; he was dreaming.

With that knowledge in mind, Naruto glanced towards the group of girl's attempting to cause bodily harm to him, and sent a direct, very minimal amount of killing intent towards them. The girls instantly seized up, and stumbled, they slowly began to back away like nervous animals, and then, as suddenly as their behaviour changed, they were back to relative normal, wondering why they had backed away from the blonde boy in front of them.

Sakura opened her mouth for a second, which caused Naruto to raise an eyebrow, before she shut it again, and defiantly strode off along with the other girls.

"Naruto One, Random Girls Zero," Naruto mused to himself as he laid back and kicked his feet up on the desk in front of him, ignoring the outraged look upon Sakura's and Ino's faces.

If he recalled correctly, Iruka would be walking into the room soon, it would have been right after the beating he suffered in the original case, but since he didn't' plan on allowing some girls inside his dream to beat him up.

"Iruka-sensei, Hurry up!" Naruto screamed at the top of his lungs, literally willing Iruka to walk through the door so he could get to the 'Survival Training' with Kakashi, something he had wanted to redo for a while.

All around him Naruto heard scolding, and other shouts directed at him, all telling him basically the same thing 'Shut up'. Naruto scowled and glared at the door, so far, his dream was not all that fun, especially at the point he had entered it; He had not wanted to scare Sakura-chan or any of the other girls using killing intent.

Five minutes later, Iruka walked into the room along with Mizuki, both looking as refreshed as ever. Naruto took special note of the stack of papers under Iruka's left arm, they seemed to be out of order, and stacked rather unevenly.

Naruto frowned deeply, something was wrong here. Mizuki had been imprisoned after he had been beaten half to Death, which was the night of the Graduation exam. But, His and Sasuke's ...misfortune had been during the Genin Seminar, he was certain of it.

Iruka took notice of Naruto's disposition straight away, and despite his appearance, seemed to be in a foul mood. Unfortunately, for Naruto, Iruka was looking for an outlet. Beside him, Mizuki looked amused, while still sporting an ever-friendly look upon his face.

Naruto's facade darkened slightly. Iruka took it for a sign of worry and capitalised on it.

"Naruto, you're first up!" he snapped out, before pointing to the door from where he had just entered the room.

Naruto's face reverted to a smile as he walked down from his desk towards the front of the room.

"This will be easy!" Naruto exclaimed as he threw his hands behind his head and let out a childish laugh.

"Since you're so confident please show everyone your abilities at Henge no Jutsu, right now," Iruka said loudly whilst glaring at Naruto.

Naruto's smile widened into a Grin and he pointed towards Mizuki, closing his left eye, as if taking aim at the Chuunin.

"Bang," Naruto said casually.

Almost exactly on cue, Mizuki's form was bathed in smoke, erupting from no where, only to have it clear away almost instantly, revealing a rather feminine, rather naked looking Mizuki, whose assets seemed to only be covered by a headband protector across their chest, and a few wisps of smoke surrounding their hips.

Iruka slowly turned around to face Mizuki, only to seize up as his eyes landed upon Mizuki's henged form, and seconds later burst into motion as he reached up to cover his nose, which had begun to leak a copious amount of blood.

"Naruto, how did you do that without Hand seals?" Iruka asked through the blood still dripping down his face.

Naruto twitched lightly in anger and switched his hand from Mizuki, who had become preoccupied with his henged form, over to Iruka.

"Don't be a spoil sport Iruka-sensei," Naruto said happily, before glowering slightly and adding, "Or you're next."

Iruka flushed lightly, before glaring at Naruto and motioning to the door.

Naruto grinned and dropped his hand to his side, before walking out past Mizuki, and slapping the blue haired chuunin on the back, causing the Jutsu to disperse. A flustered look appeared on the before, perplexed looking chuunin's face.

A miniscule amount of time later, Iruka, Mizuki and Naruto were in the testing quarters. Both of the Chuunin had taken up seats behind a desk, which was covered in forehead protectors, along with two cups, and a jug filled with water.

"Naruto, you must create two bunshins to pass the test," Iruka said as calmly as he could manage, beside him, Mizuki was still flustered, and covertly checking his entire body, to make sure everything was back to normal.

"Could you be more specific?" Naruto asked with a wide grin, "I mean, there are a lot of different kinds of Bunshins, There are Mizu Bunshins," he said, before seemingly listing it off on his fingers.

From the jug sitting upon the table's top, a torrent of water burst forth congregating beside Naruto. The water formed into an exact replica of Naruto, right down to the stance he was in.

"Oboro Bunshins," Naruto said as he counted off another finger.

As the Water Clone had come into existence, so did the Haze Clone, albeit on the opposite side of Naruto, and through the trace amounts of water left in the air from the Water clone's formation.

"Tsuchi Bunshins," the blonde boy continued.

Two spaces to the right the floorboards groaned, before they burst upwards, revealing a dirt covered Naruto, who began to brush off the excess dirt covered his body.

"Kage Bunshins," Naruto said before biting his lower lip.

Next to the Haze Clone, a bloom of smoke burst into existence, before dispersing, revealing the existence of a fourth clone.

"Or did you just mean just a normal Bunshin?" Naruto asked, as a final burst of smoke, less impressive then the previous one, signalled the creation of a regular clone.

Naruto looked on amusedly as both Iruka, and Mizuki seemed to gape like fishes, clearly unnerved by his miraculously display.

"Well, I'll just be taking my forehead protector," all the Naruto's said in sync as they walked forward and each grabbed one of the objects upon the table, except for two of them, which phased out of existence.

One by one, the Naruto's filed out of the room, three of them with a forehead protector in hand. Iruka and Mizuki seemed to still be stupefied; both of them had remained relatively still, their brains still trying to process what Naruto had just demonstrated.

The blue-eyed boy stared at Mizuki for a few more seconds, before shifting his hands into a single hand sign and forcing the necessary chakra into position. A second later, Mizuki was smothered in smoke again, and the Naruto was out of the room.

Both Iruka and Mizuki started coughing, finally becoming self-aware again. Unfortunately, for Mizuki, becoming self-aware also meant becoming aware of the modification of his body, except this time, there was no Forehead protector covering his chest, or smoke hide behind.

Unlike a few minutes prior, Iruka had not been expecting anything perverted as he turned to Mizuki, unfortunately for him, that meant he was hit with the full force of the 'technique'. Iruka's nose exploded with a torrent of blood, which splattered on Mizuki, covering them in liberal amounts.

A dozen or so meter's down the corridor leading out of the school four Naruto's were grinning at each other. The leading Naruto had in his hand the forehead protectors that he and his clones had taken from the table.

"Mission accomplished," the Naruto that had caught up to the group.

"Why did you take the water jug?" one of the Narutos asked as he took note of the jug.

"For the road," the offending clone said with a shrug.

"Well that was stupid," a clone from the side said, to which the Naruto with the jug frowned.

"Why do you say that?" Up at the front of the group the real Naruto turned his head slightly and grinned.

"Because I'm dismissing you all pretty soon," the real Naruto said as if it were obvious.

"Oh, well that sucks," the clone managed to say, before their form lost colour and coherency and fell apart.

The Earth clone experienced a similar effect, crumbling into dirt, the Shadow clone, on the other hand just exploded.

"Why the hell did they even grab a forehead protector?" Naruto mumbled to himself as he threw away three spare bands.

"This is the first time I've ever been this aware in a dream," Naruto mused to himself as he looked around the front of the Academy.

* * *

From what he remembered, there wasn't really 'anything' to do until Mizuki tried to trick him last time, and that was going to be a while before the Genin exam was finished; last time he had been one of the last to be tested.

Naruto glanced around the courtyard of the Academy again.

"There isn't much to do until then," Naruto mused to himself.

It was true, he had nothing to do, but then, he could do anything.

'Anything,' Naruto thought with a grin forming upon his face.

There was a lot of thing's he wished he could have done in his childhood, but had never had the courage, or opportunity to do, unfortunately all the chances he would have had to do most of them vanished the moment he hit Jounin.

A bonus was that in his dream he would not suffer the repercussions of his actions, in every sense of the word, he was free. Free to do anything he wanted. Until the dream ended that was. It had been going longer then usual though, Naruto reasoned; there was no reason to say it would end soon.

Nevertheless, Naruto did not want to take any chances, with a grin and a jump he was away, in search of his first target; a certain brunette kunoichi with a fetish for sharp objects.

Unfortunately, there was not a very large chance that she would be in the village, it was a weekday, so it was likely she would be out of the village doing a D rank mission, but there was an equally high possibility that she would be in the village... doing a D rank mission.

Naruto frowned lightly as he made his way across the rooftops of Konoha. Either, in the past ten years since he had become a ninja, Konoha had not changed at all, or his mind was taking details from the present because it could not recall what Konoha had been back then. Naruto preferred the later explanation. He had long since learned that redundant things became obsolete, and things that did not grow died.

Konoha was a great tree in the world, with its roots spread out far and wide; there was little chance it could die, in Naruto's mind: It had withstood three sieges in his lifetime. One from the Sound and Sand, One from Cloud, and a final siege from Stone.

The last war had been when he had come to power. It was ironic, that at the time he had begun to learn about the Fourth Hokage in earnest, right down to his techniques. It was the second time that The Leaf had been pitted against Stone, and it had been the second time that they had been defeated, no, defeat was not the word for it, they had been utterly annihilated.

Where the Fourth had lost one of his students, Naruto had lost his mentor; Jiraiya.

The Perverted Toad Hermit was the closet thing he had had to a father, it was a devastating loss. It was a wake up call, there was no more games, no playing around. Jiraiya had been one of the strongest people in the world. However, he had also been old. Naruto had later taken up reading as a hobby; it had started with Jiraiya journal. Jiraiya had left it to him, along with all of his possessions.

The journal gave light to a lot of thing's that Naruto had not known about Jiraiya, such as he had only had sex three times in his entire life, and that he really was doing research in the brothels. Most of his agents worked in the Red Light Industry in one way or another, much to Narutos surprise.

After he had finished with The Toad Sennin's journal, he had moved onto the more... fictional works that Jiraiya had written, such as Icha Icha series.

Naruto let a giggle escape him.

Kakashi had been thrilled, and Sakura. Sakura had tried to kill him. It had been a hectic time.

"Hey, watch out!" someone yelled out, prompting Naruto to bring himself out of his thoughts.

A few streets over there was a slight commotion; the target of his attention was running down the middle of a semi crowded street, chasing down a certain bane of Konoha. Naruto reached behind his back and into his weapons pouch, picking out two shuriken and a single kunai. With a flick of his wrist Naruto sent the two-shuriken flying parallel with each other.

After waiting a few milliseconds, Naruto let loose the kunai, sending it after the two shuriken. The Kunai cut past the two shuriken, straight between them. It nicked both of the metal stars slightly and altered their trajectory. Naruto focused for a split second and initiated Kage Bunshin no Jutsu. The two shuriken flickered for a second, before in a semi circle more materialised.

A second before the Shuriken hit the ground Naruto pulled his chakra into form once again and initiated a second ninjutsu. A small puff of smoke burst out from each of the shuriken, obscuring them for a second, before a louder then average thud rang out. The smoke cleared away to reveal a blockade of overly large shuriken cutting across the street; along with an unconscious feline.

Naruto jumped down from the rooftop he had landed upon, down to the street below where he had intercepted the ribbon-adorned cat. A significantly larger puff of smoke clouded the line of shuriken for a moment, before it faded away, revealing the two shuriken he had originally thrown along with the kunai.

"Thank you, but I didn't need your help," Tenten said to Naruto with a scowl as he faced her.

"I hadn't assumed you did," Naruto said earnestly.

"Oh?" the brown haired kunoichi pressed on with a scowl upon her face as she placed her hands on her hips.

"Your name is Tenten, you became a Genin about a year ago, you're specialised in long and close ranged weapons combat, you aspire to be a ninja on the calibre of Tsunade of the Sennin," Naruto began to say, before he paused at the amused look upon Tenten's face, he mimicked Tenten's scowl for a second, before grinning.

"Your favourite foods are sesame dumplings and Chinese food, with your least favourite being umeboshim and your favourite hobby is Astrology, you were born on the Ninth of March, your astrology sign is according to the month is The Rabbit, and The Tiger according to your birth time, which was Four thirty five in the morning," Naruto rambled off, his grin growing wider and wider at the look of disbelief forming upon Tenten's face in the stead of his words.

"How'd-," Tenten began.

"I know?" Naruto said, finishing her sentence.

"I'm your personal stalker of course," Naruto said casually.

Tenten's eyebrows rose up to meet her hairline.

"My stalker," she repeated, staring worriedly at Naruto, "Why would you want to stalk me?" she questioned the whisker-marked boy.

"Well," Naruto began but hesitated, before bringing his hand up and motioning for Tenten to come closer.

Tenten leaned in closer, keen to hear why her 'stalker' was stalking her.

"The reason I'm stalking you is..." Naruto trailed off, before removing the small amount of space that resided between himself and Tenten, and kissing her upon the lips.

"Because you're cute," Naruto said as he broke his lips off from Tenten's after a few seconds.

At first Tenten seemed stunned, but slowly a cycle of emotions ran through her eyes. Starting with being stupefied; as evident by the shocked look within her eyes. it was soon followed by embarrassment; shown by the blush appearing on her cheeks, and finally it landed upon anger; depicted by the change in both her eyebrow's, and clenching of her jaw.

"To be honest, i was kidding, about stalking you that is, you really are cute," Naruto admitted as he reached behind his head with his left hand and scratched the top of his head, letting off a small burst of laughter.

"Gotta go!" Naruto exclaimed as he brought his right hand up into a half-ram hand seal.

Tenten's eyes flashed in alarm as she recognised the telltale signs of the upcoming technique.

"Don't you-" she began angrily, before trailing off, as Naruto's form flickered out of view, "...dare." The brown haired girl finished lamely, before reaching up and touching her lips lightly with her fingertips.

* * *

Naruto sniggered to himself as he looked down at Tenten from the top of a building a few blocks away.

"Still got it," Naruto said with a grin as he turned away.

"Uzumaki Naruto"

Naruto stared up silently for a few seconds.

"Anbu-san, or should I say Yuugao-chan?" Naruto said playfully as he leaned backwards against the roof's edge.

The masked woman stiffened slightly.

"Hokage-sama has requested your presense," the woman said levelly before extending a hand down towards Naruto, "Come with me."

Naruto frowned lightly.

"Why?"

Yuugao stared down blankly at Naruto through her porcelain mask.

"I was not informed."

"Can I ask you a question, Yuugao-chan?" Naruto asked as he eyed the slightly pale hand being extended towards him.

"You may, as long as it is acceptable," the black and grey armour clad woman said, with a notable growl entering her voice.

"Can Hayate keep up with you, you know, with his cough?"

Without warning Yuugao's hand crossed the little distance that remained between them and gripped down upon Naruto's shoulder.

Naruto winced lightly, before glaring up at Yuugao.

"That hurts," Naruto said with a scowl.

Yuugao let out a light scoff before she brought her right hand up and replicated Naruto's actions mere minutes prior.

"Wait, I don't like dual-" Naruto began to protest, but his words never found their end as he and Yuugao were whisked away in a whirl of air.

The moment Naruto and Yuugao came out of transit, Naruto convulsed lightly, before pushing the purple haired woman's hand away from his shoulder.

"Teleportation," Naruto finished with a grimace.

"My apologies, but it was the fastest way," the purple haired ANBU said with a tone that was anything but apologetic.

"Apology accepted," Naruto, snapped out, before adding in an afterthought, "You know, you didn't answer my question."

"Kanashibari no Jutsu," Yuugao hissed out, her hands flowing through several seals before she slammed her palm into Naruto's chest.

Naruto grunted as he flew backwards a few meters and fell backwards, no longer able to control his muscles. He had seen the technique coming a mile away, but his body had not been able to keep up with him. A grimace found its way onto Naruto's face; it had been a long while since he had found himself victim to the Paralysis technique.

"Your appointment with the Hokage is in half an hour, so just stay there until you're called," the ANBU said with a smug tone.

Although Naruto could not see, he felt the wind ripple as Yuugao disappeared, no doubt going off to laugh at him.

A few minutes past with Naruto laying still upon the ground, trying to move the various parts of his body. He knew it was close to being absolutely futile; him being able to break out that is, but he would not just roll over on this one. He could not, literally.

Slowly a dark head of hair slowly appeared within his vision, along with a slender face and a pair of twin pupil-less eyes. Internally Naruto frowned; he almost recognised the face above him. It was obviously a Hyuuga, but which one he could not be sure, there were few Hyuuga he remembered meeting when he was twelve, in fact, he was quite sure Hinata had been the only one.

Naruto briefly wondered if his dream was becoming less and less like a memory, and more like a nightmare.

He watched the girl's brow furrowed for a moment, and then it hit him. The white-eyed youth blinked owlishly for a moment, before leaning down further.

"I do not know you, but your eyes say you know me, why is that?" she said softly, as she stared down curiously into Naruto's eyes.

"Why do you not talk or move?" the Hyuuga girl asked bemusedly.

A frown seemed to mar her face for a second, before she spoke again.

"If it is because I am of the Hyuuga, and because Father wants me to succeed him, then please do not hold your tongue, and place out of respect."

Prior to the sentence, Naruto had not honestly been struggling against the Jutsu as much as he could, he knew it would, in time, unravel, and release him. However, unfortunately for her, the Hyuuga girl had pushed the wrong buttons; it had been more then a few years since he had shown respect towards anyone, and it would not due for the tradition to fall, especially in a dream.

Naruto could not even put into words how much he loathed Kanashibari. It was great when you could use it against enemies, but when you were the target it was a pain in the ass. Focusing his considerable will power, the demon-endowed boy strained against the bindings placed upon his muscles as hard as he could.

He was immersed so much in freeing himself, that he didn't notice as a soft hand descended down upon his forehead and caressed it. Naruto's eyes refocused upon the girl above him, for the moment stopping his attempts to break free. He was surprised to see that their were veins bulging out around the girl's eyes.

The only time he had seen the Byakugan being used was when a Hyuuga was in battle, or searching for something.

'Did I offended her?' Naruto wondered briefly as he stared up into the seemingly unfocused eyes above him.

"There," the girl whispered almost silently.

As soon as the word left her lips, Naruto could see a foreign sensation invade his body from his forehead, where her hand laid. Naruto slowly felt his body relax, the tension caused by the Jutsu was fading away, allowing his body to crumble, ever so slightly, against the floor.

"Thank you, Hanabi," Naruto mumbled before his eyes fluttered closed.

"You are welcome," she said softly, before smiling, ever so slightly, at the boy in front of her.

"How did you do that?" Naruto asked as he opened his eyes, and stared back up at Hanabi.

"I do not know," the black haired girl admitted as she drew her hand away from Naruto's head.

"Can I ask you something?" Naruto questioned the younger girl as he titled his head back, ever so slightly.

"If, in return, I may as you a question," Hanabi answered politely.

Naruto nodded lightly to himself, before posing Hanabi a question.

"Can the Byakugan see through clothing?" 

* * *

**Review at your own leisure. **


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